[MD] A problem with the MOQ.

[Ham Priday]

Dear Marsha -- 

> Greetings Ham,
>
> On Apr 28, 2012, at 1:23 PM, "Ham Priday" <hampday1 at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>> Tuukka:
>>> But our theories coincide in that subjective quality is more
>>> fundamental than objective quality. Idealism seems to be
>>> coming back to fashion anyhow... well, I don't care about
>>> that, but I couldn't make the SOQ any other way.
>>
>> Ham:
>> Subjective "quality" (awareness) is "more fundamental" because
>> sensibility and value are both "essential", that is, derived from
>> Essence, whereas objective quality (existential reality) is an
>> intellectual construction of value-sensibility.
>
[Marsha]:
> What is this "subject" and where is it to be found?  There is the
> experience of awareness, but is it anything other than the arising
> of innumerable causes and conditions, or patterns of relationships?
> And too, it seems to me, both the "objective" and "subjective"
> quite obviously share in being interdependent with the process
> of conceptual construction.
>
> What do you think?  Can you find more than a pattern?

I've read and re-read the Buddha-inspired "not-this, not-that" definition of 
selfness you've tried on Mark,Tuukka, dmb, John, Andre, Arlo (have I missed 
anyone?) with no takers.  You must be really desperate to come to ME for a 
solution to your paradox!

Marsha, you are a meditator with an analytical mind and a passion for truth. 
For
someone persuaded that "it's all analogy, every bit of it", why isn't it 
clear to you that tying a personal philosophy to rhetoric rather than a 
concept is an escape from reality, not an approach that invites insight.  To 
be honest, this is nihilism by rote recall.  "A flow of ever-changing, 
conditionally co-dependent, impermanent and conceptualized static patterns 
(dharma) of inorganic, biological, social and intellectual value" is 
meaningless verbiage no matter how many times you recite it.  What's more, 
it doesn't provide a cogent concept of reality that one can relate to in 
terms of virtue, morality, behavior, judgments, or goals to aim for.

Here's my advice to you.  Forget the mantras, the koans, the clichés, and 
the "pattern" analogies.  In your next meditation, try to erase all this 
semantic "knowledge" from your mind, and think about experience as would a 
naïve child.  When you do so, you may realize that the feelings you sense 
are yours alone, that the world you experience is a product of those senses, 
and that the reality you've come to know as "empirical fact" is actually no 
more than the awareness of an other by a self that is you.  To put it 
another way: YOU are the sole owner of the reality you experience.  Whatever 
virtue, quality, or value that experience has is proprietary to your 
awareness of it.

What does this revelation this tell us about experiential existence?  If you 
remove the complexity and details, you are left with a fundamental 
dichotomy -- the same one Descartes formulated and analyzed.  Existence is 
the relation of individuated awareness to multiplistic otherness.  This 
infers a subject/object duality, neither contingent of which is more or less 
"real" than the other.  While shallow people may say "well, that's life," 
and be done with it, the philosopher seeks a comprehensible theory that 
identifies the essential nature of reality.

Since existence is a relational dichotomy, there are two entities to be 
accounted for:
1.  That you are the locus of your reality is tangible proof of your 
existential identity,
     whether you call yourself an illusion or a pattern.
2.  What you experience beyond self-awareness is not intrinsic to your self
     identity and must be acknoweledged as the identity of an other.

What then, apart from self and other, is the nature of these two entities? 
It serves no heuristic purpose to identify them as "patterns of Quality". 
Self is subjective in that it is the "awareness" of being.  Other is 
objective in that it is the "property" of being.  As co-dependent 
contingencies, self and other become 'being-aware'; as independent entities 
they are nothing.  What binds them together is the Value of the Source 
(Essence) that negates (differentiates) them in the first place.

The self lives on borrowed time and in borrowed space derived from the being 
its awareness constructs from essential value and negated nothingness.  Its 
core nature is value-sensibility.  The nature (design) of existence is 
imbued in the Value realized from this sensibility, and Being is an 
intellectual reduction of this value.  Everything that exists is a construct 
of value-sensibility in accordance with the cosmic design implicit in 
essential value and differentiated by nothingness.  Absolute Essence is the 
'negational' source that accounts for the totality of relational existence.

So, Marsha, while you and your reality may not be "real" to you, it is the 
only reality you will ever know as a free and autonomous agent of value.

I hope this exposition addresses your query sufficiently to modify your 
worldview, but I'm not optimistic in this regard.  I also hope you will give 
some thought to what I've sketched above and prove me wrong.  While most of 
us cling to our personal beliefs until awakened one day by an epiphany that 
changes our whole worldview,  unfortunately some of us never experience such 
an epiphany.  May you be one who does.

With sincere respect and best wishes,
Ham